There were meetings in which detectives leafed through statements by fantasists, previous offenders, eyewitnesses who had seen nothing.

‘I still think it’s the father.’

‘He has an alibi.’

‘We’ve been through this. He could have driven back to the area. Just.’

‘No one saw him. His own daughter didn’t see him.’

‘Maybe she did. Maybe that’s why she won’t say anything.’

‘Anyway, anything she saw she won’t remember now. It will just be memories of memories of suggestions. Everything’s covered over.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying she’s gone.’

‘Dead?’

‘Dead.’

‘You’re giving up on her?’

‘No.’ He paused. ‘But I am taking some of the men off the case.’

‘That’s what I said. You’re giving up.’

One year later, a photograph enhanced by a new computer program, which even its inventor warned was speculative and unreliable, showed how Joanna might have changed. Her face was slightly filled out, her dark hair a little bit darker. Her tooth was still chipped and her smile was still anxious. Some newspapers carried it, but only on an inside page. There had been a murder of a particularly photogenic thirteen-year-old girl and this had dominated the headlines for weeks. Joanna was an old story now, a tingle in the public memory. Rosie stared at the picture until it blurred. She was scared she wouldn’t recognize her sister when she saw her, that she would be a stranger. And she was scared that Joanna wouldn’t recognize her either – or would know her but turn away from her. Sometimes she went and sat in Joanna’s room, a room that hadn’t been altered since the day she disappeared. Her teddy was on her pillow, her toys stacked in the under-bed boxes, her clothes – which would be too small for her – neatly folded in drawers or hanging in the wardrobe.